Amid the darkness

Shelton Herald

Published
2:15 pm EST, Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Image
1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

Amid the darkness

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

The night can be so dark. Follow the star — what star?

Who can think of light, of good will, hope, faith — any of it — knowing the shelter and serenity of a suburban school day can be shattered as it was in nearby Newtown? People there, some of them, took down their lights, brought the Santas in from their yards. And who could blame them?

There is no explanation. Nothing that can be understood. How can the human heart cope?

It does, though. It will.

With that, too, no one knows how, or why. There is no other way. The sun will rise, the birds will gather at the feeders to chatter and sing. Children will stir and stretch, begin to fuss and bustle. And — lit from within by that energy that is life, that irrepressible spirit — the kids will want to go outside and play. Eventually. We should let them play. Wouldn’t it feel good to give them some toys?

Let us gather to hug and hope, be close with friends and family, sings songs of faith and promise, share and put gifts beneath the star-topped tree.

It is not wrong that life goes on. It always has. It is life. It is not an insult that people share and relish what they can find that is good.

It is not wrong that we cry. The fact that we mourn for them and that we feel the pain of the parents, the children and the entire community is proof that goodness exists. The moment that we become immune to such tragedy is the moment a little more ugliness enters the world.

At every Christmas there are things incomprehensible, wrong, tragic somewhere in the world. We feel this as a body blow: it was so close, and the good people of Newtown so like us in their suburban lives, their dreams for their children — some now lost. We are human. And so we will ache and feel and cry for our devastated neighbors. We will seek to do what we can to help — though really there is sometimes nothing, nothing.

And despite what may seem mounting evidence to the contrary, we will have hope, and faith.

Goodness, like evil, is real.

We are human, and we must believe in good. The night after the morning’s horror, some of the people in Newtown — not knowing what else to do, perhaps — gathered and sang: